skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I am very proud of my son Eliot, who just competed in the 2nd Annual Avanti Awards , organized by a group called Stellar Scholars. Out of a large and high-quality group of entries this year, he was able to snag the 2nd Place Award (Magna Cum Laude).It wasn't easy, either. We bought Eliot some 3D rendering software, but it was taking too long to learn, and the model of the car he had sketched months before continued to languish on his laptop, unfinished. The deadline was rushing at him. Finally, he gave up and rendered it in Paint Shop Pro. Originally, he designed it in gold, but one of the organizers requested he change it to red. Here are both versions:
And here are some photos from the awards ceremony. The theme this year was Avanti meets Mustang, and there was a very nice car show along with the event! (In the picture of the 3 winners, Eliot is the one standing closest to the young lady in the gold dress, who presented the trophies.)
As a lover of the Book of Common Prayer, as an Anglican, I must pause here to mourn the death of Dr. Peter Toon.Read about it here.May light perpetual shine upon Dr. Toon. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.
One of the things that has limited me as a visual artist, as I mentioned here, is that I am very slow at it. That means my output is limited and so there are just not many of my paintings to be had. But now, thanks to a site called RedBubble, this will be changing. Various types of prints of many of my paintings will soon be available there for purchase. Some are already available, such as this one:
This is the painting of mine that comes closest to Photorealism. Many people have mistaken it for a photograph, in fact. I had it at an open-air Art Fair years ago, and very few people gave it a second glance. They thought it was simply a large photographic print. I'm particularly pleased with the success I had in rendering the chrome.
Please go and check my RedBubble site from time to time. More works will be added soon!
Any way you measure it, my in-laws are amazing people. Each of them has decades of competitive running to their credit. For many years, they went on bicycle camping trips every summer, on which they rode many hundreds of miles, some of it in very hilly terrain.
One year they rode bicycles across Death Valley.
In July.
Individually and together, they have maintained a decades-long testimony to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But what I love about their brand of spirituality is that it has physical manifestations. Long after their age-peers have retired from active pursuits, they continue to push themselves to achieve amazing things.
My father-in-law, Don Walkwitz, will turn 76 next month. Over the weekend, he ran a 5K race in 24 minutes, 52 seconds at the Get Fit Tulsa event. Here, I will do the math for you: That is an average of exactly 8 minutes per mile for the 3.1 mile course!
In this race, my father-in-law beat guys in their 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, and 20s. If I had been in Tulsa that day, he'd have beaten me, too.
Godspeed, Don!
I consider myself a serious painter. Whether others do, I cannot tell. My volumetric output is tiny, because I am only able to do it part time, and because I work so slowly. Still, when I achieve the look I intended for a painting, it makes me happy.
This one makes me happy. It seems odd to me that, with all its sunny exuberance, I finished the painting on Good Friday. However, considering how our Lord spent that Friday evening (the harrowing of hell), perhaps it is not so incongruous after all.
